Software development and Integration in Robotics (SDIR VI) - May 9, 2011 - Full Day Workshop

Abstract

The sixth edition of the ICRA SDIR workshop reflects an increased awareness within the Robotics community for the importance of adopting best practice software engineering techniques and approaches in the development of robotics systems. Nowadays, implementing complete robotic systems is still more of an art than a systematic engineering process. Essential parameters and non-functional properties are mostly hidden in the software structures and are not explicated. Thus, they are neither accessible during system development nor at run-time. Indeed, robots as very complex systems depend on systematic engineering. As for every engineering endeavour, one should rely on the power of models. In software-intensive domains like robotics, systematic engineering requires the step from code-driven to model-driven software development. Software models can represent relevant properties of robotic resources, their usage constraints, and their mutual dependencies and enable the development of tools that support the system engineering process. Software models are computational, that is they can be executed, simulate the system evolution and even represent the system evolution at run-time. They also allow to separate robotics knowledge from short-cycled implementation technologies. Since recently, tools like Eclipse are matured enough to be applied in and tailored to robotics. Design patterns, best practices, sophisticated and optimized software structures and approved solutions can be made available to experts in robotics within highly optimized code generators such that even novices can immediately take advantage from a coded immense experience. The tangible results of the workshop will be a practical program of research and public relations focused on the way that software development techniques are actually practiced in Robotics and a roadmap that indicates the strategic directions to pursue the synergy between Robotics and Software Engineering.
The workshop will be organized in three parts:

In Part I, a tutorial on Model-Driven Engineering will be given by an expert in software engineering. The tutorial will be an opportunity for the participants to assess the best practice technologies and approaches and to discuss strategic research directions for their exploitation in robotics.

In Part II, a set of talks will be given by authors of submitted papers. All the submissions undergo a peer review process. Papers passing the review process and not being selected for oral presentation can be presented as posters. Submitting a contribution is not a prerequisite to participate to the workshop discussion.

In Part III, we stimulate dialogue with the participants on some hot topics based on their similar or different opinions, exchange ideas and help identify research opportunities.